Large-scale feedlot operations face new EPA water regulations

WASHINGTON (AP)  Factory-style farms that produce large amounts of waste will have to comply with a new water pollution rule the Bush administration issued Monday to meet a court-ordered deadline.

The new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency says all big concentrated animal feeding operations must apply for a permit to control pollution under the Clean Water Act, administration officials said.

The rule will affect feedlot operations on the South Plains, but some operators say they've been aware for some time of the new regulations and already are in compliance.

Robert Carter, general manager of C Bar Feed Yard in Plainview, said they've been preparing for the new regulations for the last few years.

"It's really nothing new," Carter said. "They announced something we've been participating in for the last three years. We got the permits three years ago. We manage all the runoff and meet all the standards."

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman were making the announcement.

The new rule, issued with White House approval, requires livestock operations to:

 Develop a "comprehensive nutrient management plan" that sets limits on how much animal manure can be applied as fertilizer on farm fields. Plans must have state approval.

 File annual reports on numbers of animals, the amount of manure they use and where it is going. Animal manure typically contains nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus but also pathogens, salts and heavy metals like copper.

Benjamin Grumbles, a deputy assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Water, said the manure plans are "the heart of the regulation" and represent "a significant advancement in terms of environmental protection."

Some other changes include extending the rule to cover farms with immature swine and heifers and those with chickens in a dry manure handling system.

Farms that could formerly claim catastrophic storm exemptions  because they said their operations probably would discharge livestock pollution only during the worst 24-hour storm that could occur in a quarter-century  will now have to obtain permits.

New hog facilities will likewise have to obtain permits, Grumbles said, except if they say they probably would discharge pollution only during the worst 24-hour storm that could occur in a century.

But EPA dropped some Clinton-era proposals to ban any discharge of manure from hog farms and to require big pork and poultry processors to obtain water pollution permits along with the farms they contract to grow chickens and hogs.

"We didn't believe there should be a federal mandate for co-permitting," Grumbles said.

The rule covers concentrated animal feeding operations, large and small. The new "duty to apply" for a permit is aimed at the approximately 15,000 largest facilities with more than 1,000 "animal units"  the actual numbers of specific animals vary depending on their type. These operations are generally concentrated on small land areas.

But EPA, when determining who must obtain a permit, will no longer use the term "animal units" and instead rely on language that spells out numbers for specific animals.

Years in the making, the rule deals with the concentrated manure from corporate agriculture that has led to fights between livestock farms and neighbors complaining about health and environmental effects.

The court-ordered deadline results from a broader settlement requiring EPA to update technology standards for industrial sources of water pollution. Runoff from agriculture is the biggest source of pollution in rivers, streams and lakes, the government says.

In 1992, EPA and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, an environmental group, reached a court settlement requiring the agency to update its technology standards for several categories of industrial water pollution.

After study, EPA chose the factory-style farms as one of the industrial categories that needed improvement. Large-scale animal factories produce 220 billion gallons of manure annually, the government says.

Melanie Shepherdson, an attorney with NRDC's clean water project, said the rule leaves too much discretion to states in regulating water pollution, and relies upon a system that is still largely voluntary.

Under existing law, concentrated animal feeding operations already are required to get permits because Congress 30 years ago said they must be regulated as sources of water pollution under the Clean Water Act's water pollution permitting program, she said.

But some operations are exempted from permitting, such as those that say they will discharge waste only during very severe storms.

"It's just that existing law isn't implemented," Shepherdson said. "Basically, the new rule is not going to fix this tremendous problem. In fact, it's just going to give factory farms the legal cover to continue polluting."